Matrilineality in Judaism is the view that people born of a Jewish mother are themselves Jewish. The Torah does not explicitly discuss the conferring of Jewish status through matrilineality, and the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) provides many examples of Israelite men whose children by foreign women appear to have been accepted as Israelite, however, Jewish oral tradition codified in The Talmud by the 2nd century CE maintains matrilineality was always the rule, and adduces indirect textual evidence from the Torah, with the implicit assumption that the women in question converted to Judaism.
The
Mishnah (
Kiddushin 3:12) states that, to be a Jew, one must
be either the child of a Jewish mother or a
convert to Judaism, (
ger
tzedek, "righteous convert"). The
Talmud
(Kiddushin 68b) derives this law from the Torah, specifically :
"Thy daughter thou shalt not give to his son, nor shalt thou take
his daughter to thy son. For they will turn away thy son from
following me, that they may serve other gods." This rule was
clearly accepted by the 2nd century CE, with virtually no debate
over it appearing in the Talmud.
Orthodox
opinion regards this rule as dating from receipt of the Torah at
Mount
Sinai
, but most non-Orthodox scholars regard it as
originating either at the time of Ezra (4th
Century BCE) or during the period of Roman
rule in the 1st-2nd centuries CE.
In the
Hellenistic period of the
4th Century BCE–1st Century CE some evidence indicates that the
offspring of intermarriages between Jewish men and non-Jewish women
were considered Jewish; as is usual in
prerabbinic texts, there is no mention of
conversion on the part of the Gentile spouse. On the other hand,
Philo of Alexandria calls the child of a Jew
and a non-Jew a
nothos (bastard), regardless of whether
the non-Jewish parent is the father or the mother .
With the emergence of
Jewish
denominations and the modern rise in
Jewish intermarriage in the 20th
century, questions about the law of matrilineal descent have
assumed greater importance to the Jewish community at large. The
heterogenous Jewish community is divided on the issue of "
Who is a Jew?" via descent; matrilineal
descent still is the rule within
Orthodox Judaism, which also holds that
anyone with a Jewish mother has an irrevocable Jewish status, and
matrilineal descent is the norm in the
Conservative movement.
Since 1983, Reform Judaism in the United States of
America
officially adopted a bilineal policy: one is a Jew
if either of one's parents is Jewish, provided that either (a) one
is raised as a Jew, by Reform standards, or (b) one engages in an
appropriate act of public identification, formalizing a practice
that had been common in Reform synagogues for at least a
generation. Karaite Judaism, which
includes only the Tanakh in its canon,
interprets the Torah to indicate that Jewishness passes exclusively
through the father's line, maintaining the system of patrilineality that many scholars believe was
the practice of ancient
Israel
.
Biblical references
In the Torah, the sons of
Moses,
Gershom and
Eliezer, by his
wife
Zipporah daughter of the
Midianite priest
Jethro, are
Jews. Within the
Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), The
Book of Ruth relates the story of a
Gentile woman married to a Jewish man, whose children are
considered Jewish.
Professor
Shaye J.D. Cohen of Harvard University states:
Numerous Israelites heroes and kings married foreign
women: for example, Judah married a Canaanite, Joseph an Egyptian,
Moses a Midianite and an Ethiopian, David a Philistine, and Solomon
women of every description.
By her marriage with an Israelite man a foreign women
joined the clan, people, and religion of her husband.
It never occurred to anyone in pre-exilic times to
argue that such marriages were null and void, that foreign women
must "convert" to Judaism, or that the off-spring of the marriage
were not Israelite if the women did not convert.
In contrast, the
Book of Ezra relates
that the prophet
Ezra, a
Jewish priestly scribe, commanded his Jewish followers amidst the
Babylonian Captivity (c. 459
BCE) to divorce their foreign wives, and this sometimes has been
regarded as the foundation of the present rule. According to the
Bible, Ezra resolved the identity threat which arose by the
intermarriage between Jews and foreigners and provided a definite
reading of the Torah.
Hellenistic period
Josephus (37 CE – c. 100 CE), in
Antiquities of the
Jews, refers to marriages between Jewish men and Gentile
women without much commentary and seems to assume that the
offspring is Jewish (or, according to one of his statements,
"
half-Jewish"); as is usual in
prerabbinic texts, there is no mention of conversion on the part of
the Gentile spouse. In contrast,
Philo of
Alexandria (20 BCE - 50 CE) calls the child of any Jewish
intermarriage a
nothos (bastard), regardless of which
parent is not Jewish. In the same vein, the Mishnah raises the
possibility that the child of a Gentile father and a Jewish mother
is a
mamzer, though this is
dismissed in the later stratum of the Talmud.
Talmudic period
The
Mishnah (
Kiddushin 3:12) states that, to be a Jew, one must
be either the child of a Jewish mother or a
convert to Judaism. The Talmud (Kiddushin 68b)
derives this law from the Torah, specifically from
Deuteronomy 7:3-4, which reads: "Thy daughter
thou shalt not give to his son, nor shalt thou take his daughter to
thy son. For they will turn away thy son from following me, that
they may serve other gods." The Talmudic sages point out that only
the child born to your daughter, though fathered by a non-Jew, is
called "your son"; a child born to your son by a non-Jewish mother
would not be called "your son," but rather "her son." Furthermore,
the Torah is specifically concerned with a non-Jewish father
turning away a Jewish child from Judaism, whereas there is no
parallel concern for a non-Jewish mother turning a child from
Judaism, presumably because the child is not Jewish.
Rabbi
Louis Jacobs noted,
"There has been a development of the law in these
instances from Biblical and pre-Rabbinic times [from patrilineal to
matrilineal descent].
The attempt to find reasons for the change, however,
has proved to be elusive...[b]ut the development in the law had
already taken place before the redaction of the Mishnah at the very
latest.
With the exception of the Rabbi in the Jerusalem Talmud
(Qiddushin, 3:12) who permitted the child of a gentile mother and
Jewish father to be circumcised on the Sabbath and whose opinion
was vehemently rejected, the law is accepted unanimously in both
Talmuds.
It is recorded as the law in all the Codes without
dissenting voice and has been the universal norm in all Jewish
communities.
In the
Middle Ages, there was a minority
stream of rabbinic opinion arguing in theoretical terms for a rule
that, to be Jewish by descent, both of one's parents must be
Jewish. In practical terms, however, the matrilineal rule remained
unchallenged from Talmudic times till the twentieth century.
Modern views
With the birth of alternative branches of Judaism and the rise in
intermarriage in the 20th century, questions about the law of
matrilineal descent arose. Children born to Jewish fathers and
non-Jewish mothers, in particular, were asking why they were not
accepted as Jews. As of today, Judaism is divided on the issue of
"
Who is a Jew?" via descent.
Orthodox Judaism
Matrilineal descent still is the rule within
Orthodox Judaism. Orthodox Judaism also
holds that anyone with a Jewish mother has irrevocable Jewish
status; in other words, even if someone with a Jewish mother
converts to another religion, that person still is considered
Jewish.
Conservative Judaism
The view
of matrilineal descent as originating at the time of Yavneh
is openly
held by many scholars affiliated with the Conservative movement: see the views of
Shaye J. D. Cohen,
below.
At the same time, matrilineal descent remains the norm in
Conservative halakha. In 1986, the Conservative Movement's
Rabbinical Assembly reiterated the commitment of the Conservative
movement to the law of matrilineal descent. Furthermore, the
movement stated that any rabbi who accepts the principle of
patrilineal descent will be subject to expulsion from the
Rabbinical Assembly. At the same time, it affirmed that "sincere
Jews by choice" should be warmly welcomed into the community and
that "sensitivity should be shown to Jews who have intermarried and
their families." The Conservative movement actively reaches out to
intermarried families by offering them opportunities for Jewish
growth and enrichment.
Polls conducted by the Conservative movement show that 68% of all
regular attenders at Conservative synagogues would support changing
the law to allow Jewish identity by patrilineal descent. However,
there is little rabbinic support for such a change (and, if Cohen's
argument is correct, such a change could not be made without also
recognising the legality of mixed marriages.)
Reform Judaism
Reform Judaism in the U.S. officially
adopted a bilineal policy in 1983: one is a Jew if either of one's
parents is Jewish, provided that either (a) one is raised as a Jew,
by Reform standards, or (b) one engages in an appropriate act of
public identification. This declaration formalized what had been
Reform policy in practice for at least a generation. Clause (b) has
been generally interpreted as making any form of public
self-identification sufficient, though some congregations may make
more formal requirements - especially if the individual in question
has been raised as a Christian. In addition, the movement decided
to accept people who were raised as Jews, such as adopted children,
even if it was not certain that either of their parents were
Jewish.
The Central Conference of American Rabbis declares that
the child of one Jewish parent is under the presumption of Jewish
descent.
This presumption of the Jewish status of the offspring
of any mixed marriage is to be established through appropriate and
timely public and formal acts of identification with the Jewish
faith and people.
The performance of these mitzvot serves to commit those
who participate in them, both parent and child, to Jewish
life.
Other movements within the
World Union for Progressive
Judaism have adopted essentially the same position as U.S.
Reform Judaism. These include:
Liberal
Judaism in England;
Reconstructionist Judaism in the
US, Canada and elsewhere; Progressive Judaism in Australia; one
congregation in Austria; some congregations in Eastern Europe. Note
that Reform Judaism in Canada and England adopts a different
position, similar to that of Conservative Judaism (though there may
be an accelerated conversion process for the children of Jewish
fathers).
Reconstructionist Judaism
Reconstructionist Judaism, which values equity and inclusivity,
also adopted the idea of bilineal descent. According to
Reconstructionist Judaism, children of one Jewish parent, of either
gender, are considered Jewish if raised as Jews.
Karaite Judaism
Karaite Judaism Includes only the
Tanakh in its canon, excluding the Talmud.
Karaite Judaism interprets the Torah to indicate that Jewishness
passes exclusively through the father's line.
Maintaining the system
of patrilineality, that many scholars
believe was the practice of ancient Israel.
Other views
Many secular and non-religious Jews in America, Israel and
elsewhere adopt a bilineal view similar to that detailed above.
In
Israel
, the status quo is that the Orthodox definition is
followed: the child of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother may
immigrate to Israel (and may claim rights under the Law of Return), but will be registered in
official documents as a non-Jew. The consequences are
various: he/she may not be wedded inside the state to anybody
considered to be officially a Jew, and he/she may not be buried in
a military cemetery if he/she dies in battle.
Some groups of Jews have historically recognized only patrilineal
descent, e.g. the
Juhurim of the
Northern Caucasus, and other Jewish groups of Central Asia. This is
also the majority view in
Karaite
Judaism, though some require both parents to be Jewish.
The historical debate
The law of descent as currently accepted by Orthodox Judaism
appears to be an exception to a generally patrilineal system of
family law. For example, laws of inheritance and the descent of the
monarchy follow the father. A Jew also belongs to the
tribe of his or her father, so a
Kohen or
Levi must be the son of
a Kohen or Levi. The child of a mixed
Sephardi-
Ashkenazi marriage generally adopts the
communal identity of the father.
For this reason, many scholars suggest that the original rule of
Jewish descent must have been patrilineal, and that it was changed
around the time of Ezra, or even later, at the time of
Yavneh, possibly under the influence of
Roman law. There are several instances in the Bible where Israelite
men marry Gentile women without direct mention of the women
converting. For example, many of the Israelite kings married
foreign princesses, and this does not seem to have prevented the
children of these marriages succeeding to the throne. An example is
Rehoboam, who was the son of
Solomon by the
Ammonite princess
Naamah. Another example is the
Book of Ruth, which seems to claim such
ancestry for King David himself.
The Orthodox answer is that both Ruth and Naamah were converts to
Judaism: the Talmud derives the laws of proselytes from the
exchange between Naomi and Ruth.
Historians, however, believe that the very notion of conversion
with a
mikvah is postbiblical. It must also
be pointed out that, even if Ruth never became Jewish, this would
not affect the Jewishness of King David on either a pure
patrilineal or a pure matrilineal rule, as Ruth was King David's
paternal great-grandmother.
A reconciliation of the evidence has been offered by Professor
Shaye J.D. Cohen. The original rule was patrilineal, but only
applied to cases where the parents were legally married, or could
lawfully have married, as it is only in these cases that the child
legally has a father at all. So in the case of an all-Jewish or
all-Gentile marriage, the child inherits his or her Jewish or
Gentile status from the father. In Biblical times, the same rule
would have applied to mixed unions, as such marriages were frowned
upon but not regarded as legally impossible. However, since the
time of Ezra, Jewish law has held that mixed marriages are not only
forbidden but void. Accordingly, the child of such a union has no
legal father, and takes the status of the mother by default; just
as in English custom a legitimate child takes his or her father’s
surname but an illegitimate child takes his or her mother’s. In the
result, it is only in the case of a mixed marriage that the child
inherits its Jewish status from the mother; in the normal case of
two Jewish parents a child inherits his or her status from the
father, but the Jewishness of the mother is a necessary condition
for this to happen. The practical result of this is the same as
that of a purely matrilineal rule.
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